


vitiation

by vicariously kingly (pelted)



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, reverse werewolf au, set in pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 16:59:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18265577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pelted/pseuds/vicariously%20kingly
Summary: Dutch van der Linde was a name known well throughout the tri-county area of western Wyoming, in no small part because of the two grown beasts he had at his beck and call.





	vitiation

**Author's Note:**

> reverse werewolf au: where human bites wolf and gives it anxiety once a month.
> 
> nah, jk. it's definitely an au purely for the angst fodder. 
> 
> in this verse, John is not Jack's father (bc that delves into a lot of questions I sadly didn't have the space to address). that said, please enjoy! life's been kicking my butt (80hr work weeks are no joke, h o w do some people do this on the regular) but I really want to get back into writing for this fandom. y'all do any replays yet?? the foreshadowing will rip your heart out.

 

 

**1899**

 

 

While wind whistled through Colter’s broken walls, moonlight glinted white on heavy blankets of snow. The night seemed awake under the noon-high moon, for all the van der Linde gang wished they weren’t. That was, they wished in equal measure that they weren’t awake, and they weren’t in Colter. 

Bundled under not as many blankets as she’d like and a coat thinner than she should’ve had, scarf wrapped tight around her ears, Abigail watched the snow dance in the wind through one damningly large crack under her side of the shed’s window. By her side slept Jack, her five-year-old and chronic blanket-hog who, _thankfully,_ had just as many blankets as he needed. He’d wanted to take off his mittens for sleep; she’d nearly tied them on to make sure he didn’t, but then he’d fallen to the crates that made up his bed and drifted to sleep before trying. As tuckered out from the running as the rest of them, obviously. He kept up well for someone who barely passed her hip in height.

Jack slept like the dead. 

She envied that.

Nothing short of a scream woke him.

She remembered that because, when a hulking, furred shape pushed through the shed’s unlockable door, she did everything short of scream. 

She jolted up, her eyes wide and muscles tense and a scream caught (mercifully, for Jack and Tilly and Mary-Beth, who shared the shed) in her throat. The beast was massive, haloed in white and harkened into the shed with a gust of icy wind. Its eyes, like voids in the dark, shifted immediately to her. Drawn by movement, drawn by who-knew-what, drawn by whatever was going to get Abigail _killed_ \--

And then its broad head raised, its jaws parted for a tongue to loll out, and the dull red of cloth tied around its neck broadcasted its domesticity even as it trotted, happy-as-anything, the short distance between door and makeshift bed.

And Abigail, heart still in her throat, bent her head to hiss at him, “ _John_ , you _asshole._ Are you trying to give me a heart attack? -- Oh, no. You’re freezing. There’s snow on your nose. There’s no space. _John_.”

The abnormally large wolf, his intelligence allegedly higher than the average bear, pretended to not understand her protests, and put his huge paws on her crate. His tail rose, wagging half-heartedly and, due to his size, thwapping against the newly closed door. Across the shed, she heard Tilly shift on her bedroll and Mary-Beth whisper something she couldn’t catch but which didn’t sound very flattering. Most likely, they’d been able to fall asleep, and didn’t appreciate being woken up by the gang’s greatest fool. 

Abigail couldn’t feel much pity for them, as at least the greatest fool wasn’t insistent on bunking with _them._

The crates groaned and creaked enough when John put his weight on them, Abigail was sure they’d give way. She braced herself for it, even as she also braced herself for a faceful of fur and being prodded in the belly and leg and anywhere else John wasn’t careful about avoiding stepping on.

Fortunately, they held. Fortunately for Jack, anyway, who further proved he could sleep through anything when he only shifted about at the sudden presence and inclusion of a bear-sized wolf in his sleeping area.

Unfortunately for Abigail, as it meant John thought he could sleep where he somehow found himself space. Abigail received a puff of rotten, raw-meat-diet breath right in her face when John sighed in relief at settling down. He stretched his legs, akimbo, over Abigail. Half of him had to be hanging off the crates and that couldn’t possibly be comfortable, but he didn’t seem to care. 

_Of course he didn’t._ He was, as it stood, a glorified dog. He’d deny it on the full moon, and Dutch would deny it every day in between, but Abigail knew it to be true.

While she wasn’t too fond of letting dogs sleep in her bed, once the chill melted off John’s thick fur, he did radiate a heat she couldn’t deny enjoying. As she warmed up-- as she stuck her fingers into his fur, prompting him to huff another happy breath that made her wrinkle her nose and want to giggle but more want to shove his face away--, the exhaustion of the Grizzlies’ hike and battling a winter storm to find temporary refuge from a home all but burned down, it sunk into her. 

What little she could see over John’s shoulder of the window and its break, a shadow passed over the swirling snow. Van der Linde’s second beast, larger even than the one that had decided to take space in her bed. 

It lingered. If the wind hadn’t howled so loud, the sounds of it investigating the smells of those within would’ve been audible.

Strangers knew it as _Cain_. Same as they knew the one in her bed as Abel. 

She, same as everyone under Dutch’s protection, knew better.

The shadow passed the shed, the black cloth around its neck a hard line against its snow-dusted, light brown coat. Now solitary, Dutch’s best beast continued its patrol. With his ears and eyes and fangs, there was no reason to think their temporary camp as anything but absolutely safe.

John huffed another reeking breath against her ear, sounding as if he were falling as fast asleep as Jack.

Despite the heaviness of his leg over her ribs and the ache in her bones from laying sideways on the crate’s hard surface, she soon followed.

 

 

**1895**

 

 

Dutch van der Linde was a name known well throughout the tri-county area of western Wyoming, in no small part because of the two grown beasts he had at his beck and call. 

Cursed beasts, some said. Cursed to be beasts, they elaborated, often with a shake in their hand and a wild look in their eye. Those, more likely than not, had met the creatures first-hand.

Cursed _man_ , others claimed. Dutch van der Linde was fated to be one day devoured by the creatures, and his soul dragged to hell in their salivating jaws. That he called them Cain and Abel simply assured the wrath of God would fall upon his head.

Those, always, were the ones who had never met the man or beasts. Their hope in a lawful town rested only in the idea that the West's rising outlaw couldn't possibly have such an advantage as two hell-hounds without some promised repercussion. 

“Do you like dogs, Mr. Escuella?”

“Those aren’t any dogs I’ve ever seen, mister.” 

Dutch chuckled. 

Javier didn’t like the sound of it.

Four times the size of hunting hounds, double the size of a timber wolf, and as broad as work horses in their prime, the beasts lounged with docile curiousity around Dutch’s white-walled tent. The smallest dark as the night, scarred along the face and nicked in the ear; the largest an unassuming brown, its calm blue eyes lidded and watching Dutch’s every movement. Neither wore proper collars, but rather ragged cloth that looked no more than an afterthought. Both lacked indication of domesticity beyond their placidity amid a cramped camp. Both trained their ears on Dutch’s return. Both, in varying degrees of energy and interest, wagged their tails when the man stepped between the two to stand at his tent’s edge. 

When Dutch turned to face him again, both mirrored him. Their eyes were too intelligent for beasts, and too endless, too blank, for a proper mind. 

The more Javier saw, the less he liked Dutch’s ease.

He didn’t bother masking his discomfort from the man who had, just the day before, brought him to town and clothed and fed him while asking for little in return.

Seeing it, Dutch again laughed and waved his hand in a sweeping, dismissive gesture.

“Don’t look so worried, Mr. Escuella. If you’re who I think you are— that is, a free man with dreams of a better future- then, they mean you no ill will. Think of them as… overgrown puppies.” 

The largest one’s ears flicked back, its empty eyes gaining a spark of _something_ , and it sneezed. Dutch set his hand atop its huge head, glancing down at it with a worrying amount of fond amusement. 

It sneezed again. Dutch ruffled its ears, then took his hand back and turned again to Javier. 

“They get along with everyone I bring back here, I assure you. If they don’t, well, it’s usually for good reason.” 

“Never met a dog that didn’t like me, sir,” Javier deadpanned.

“These boys aren’t too quiet about their displeasure. Neither, you’ll find, am I.” A smile, as bad and threatening as the chuckle. “But it won’t come to that, will it, Mr. Escuella?”

Three sets of eyes stared expectantly at him. 

Javier gave them all a short, placating nod, and kept his mouth shut. 

Dutch smiled. 

“That’s perfect,” he said, once more as grandiose and confident as he’d been when he’d promised Javier a fair and dignified living, better than chicken thieving. “That’s just perfect. I’m sure we’ll be fine, you and I.” 

_You, I, and them?_ Javier thought, but didn’t say. 

He didn’t need to. With how the beasts looked at him as if Dutch’s good will was all that stood between them and dinner, the answer was clear.

What he didn’t understand until much later was why, almost every full moon, two strangers let themselves into camp with an ease all but the oldest members lacked, and were immediately granted private conferences in that grand, central, white-walled tent with Dutch (and sometimes Hosea, and sometimes Grimshaw, and sometimes her-or-him, older members who were soon dead in Javier’s time with the gang, but always, always Dutch) . What took an age to grasp but a moment to understand was why, the day after, Hosea often took the beasts and left camp for a day’s hunt while Dutch buried himself in his books and maps and refused to be approached by anyone without _an idea of how to better ourselves, Mr. Escuella; which is, I believe, why we are all here, wouldn’t you say? -- Would you_ disagree?

He realized quickly that the beasts always disappeared on those very same, full moon nights. 

Why it took so long to put two and two together, Javier could only attribute to common sense. He’d met beasts that walked on two legs before. He’d simply never seen them revert to their true colors, fur and fangs included, under the knowing light of the brightest moon.

Javier wondered if they were cursed.

They, being the strangers. Cain and Abel.

Except in the camp, Grimshaw referred to them as Morgan and Marston; Hosea, as Arthur and John; and Dutch, as whatever fit his mood at that moment (or, as whatever the beasts' behavior earned them-- the smaller stole from the chuck-wagon more than Javier would have ever expected, while the larger fell asleep in the most inconvenient, most heavily shaded places around camp, including under tables and across several bedrolls).

And then, one full moon night, he was given the privilege to learn straight from the source.

It was his first spring and his sixth month with the gang. Wyoming's open desert became frigid at night, the dusty, sand-swept grasses frosted with icy dew. The full moon hung heavy in the clear sky, and Dutch's white walls were drawn tight, the light within illuminating clearly three, distinct figures.

"Play us something, wouldn't you, Javier?" Hosea asked, hands on his stomach, feet crossed at the ankles and hat low on his head. He sat, leaning heavily on his chair's back, facing away from Dutch's tent. 

By the cagey look of Jenny and the few others awake around the fire, they hoped Javier would oblige. Their eyes begged him. For how short a time he had in their midst, they knew they could trust his guitar to provide as good a distraction as Hosea's stories. For how short a time he knew them, he knew Hosea would not be telling tales on this night.

Full moons were strange times, always. The attitude, no matter the jobs done before or leads to follow after, became _off._ Hard to gauge. Harder to predict.

As his experience taught him well that such times boded the worst for everyone's general health and future expectations, he didn't fight the suggestion. He picked up his guitar and played.

A slow, meandering song, one to fit the surreal and off-beat mood. Hosea seemed to appreciate it, or at least he spoke his gratitude and smiled; the others, too, relaxed slowly at the easy distraction.

Before long, the fire's dimmed, and its circle of inhabitants have by and large departed to their respective sleeping areas. The exceptions were twofold: Hosea, his hat low enough over his eyes that he could have nodded off without anyone knowing, and Javier and his guitar. He plucked at the chords with an absent-mindedness softness, cycling through the notes he knew well and the ones he had yet to master. Though his awareness lingered on Dutch's tent and his strangers, he did his best to distract himself, as he had long learned nothing would come of worrying. As long as the strangers - or beasts, or whatever they were - didn't bring direct trouble to the gang, he didn't think it his place to protest. 

Naturally, just as he had accepted Dutch's unspoken decree of absolute protection and secrecy around the strangers, the trouble dropped themselves on the emptied logs by the fire.

Javier's fingers stilled on his guitar as he looked up from where he'd been staring sightlessly at the fire's crumbling logs, and took them in. 

Both smoked cigarettes half-gone. Both sat with a lazy ease that was eerily reminiscent of Hosea's lax pose, as if they belonged at the fire just as much if not more than anyone else. Both, severely underdressed: one in a red union suit and trousers and boots, the other in much the same, plus a loose blue-striped shirt. One had a neckerchief of black; the other, red. Both, pale as the devil himself.

Both watched Javier. 

Javier, thinking his life strange but not altogether the worst ( _at least these strangers weren't armed with gun or fang_ ), spoke with the practiced calm of a man very aware he was under intense scrutiny. "Arthur Morgan and John Marston, I presume?"

One hummed in what could generously be called agreement. Smoke streamed on his lengthy exhale, his eyes unrelenting from Javier's.

The other's nose scrunched and his mouth turned down. "How'd you know?"

Hosea, who wasn't as convincing in pretending to sleep as he thought, laughed. It was a dry, rattling sound, that started small and grew. He stifled it as he sat up in his chair and pushed his hat up, his eyes bright with genuine amusement.

"He's been here months now, boys," he said, guffawing again at the end as if he couldn't contain how funny he found the concept of them being _secrets,_ "and you both are astoundingly difficult to miss."

The frown deepened of the one who'd asked. 

The other continued puffing on his cigarette. Scratched his scruffy beard, then his neck. Chewed the end of his cigarette, apparently contemplating what he wanted to say next.

"Sorry," he said, not sounding sorry at all, "who're you, again?"

"The one with an ear for music," the other grumbled, scuffing his bare foot against the dusty ground and hunching forward, elbows on his knees, "that doesn't make our ears bleed. Obviously."

At that, Javier nodded. Said, "Thanks." Then, as that didn't seem to be enough, added, "It's Javier."

"Mr. Javier Escuella," Hosea elaborated for him, more energetic than he'd been all night, "who I'm sure is pleased to properly make your acquaintances."

Javier nodded again, but only after the two looked at him and cocked their heads. 

If he'd had any doubt about what they were during the rest of the month, he'd have lost them then.

"Speaking of acquaintances," Hosea continued blithely, as if the two non-strangers weren't mirroring beasts in so many little, loud ways, "if you don't stop acquainting yourself with the chickens when Susan has her back turned, John, she'll be well within her rights to tan your hide clear from your bones."

The skinnier one scoffed. John, then.

John said, "She couldn't catch me."

"Are you sure? She's a sneaky one when she's got a righteous thorn in her side." Hosea shook his head and sighed. "Anyway, _I_ wouldn't be the one to stop her."

"Neither'd I," said the other. Arthur. "A good stew's the best contribution you'd have made to this gang in months."

"Now, that's not fair," Hosea said with a quiet chuckle that, if it were day, would have definitely become a cackle. "He'd make a fine rug, too. Bet we could get a pretty penny for what Susan takes off him."

"Least I didn't leave a rug's worth of fur on half the bedrolls in camp," John growled with what Javier supposed was little heat, though he bared his teeth at Arthur as he said it. 

Arthur didn't even glance at him. His eyes, Javier saw, _did_ dart to Hosea, who caught the look and waved it off with a light smile.

"Oh, it's alright, my boy. I've seen you roll in dirt enough to know when you're just shedding your winter coat."

That stiffened Arthur's shoulders, and it wasn't just the fire's embers that turned his face red. John, to his side, lost the growl and gained a toothy smirk.

"How about a song?" Arthur asked Javier, seemingly without thinking. He had his hand back on his neck, his nails scratching light lines on lighter skin.

Javier blinked, briefly startled at being remembered. The three focused on him, Hosea's brief and equal surprise quickly hidden. Less quickly than normal, however, which made Javier--- wonder. 

A lot.

None of his wondering, he felt right to voice. Instead he nodded, asked if they wanted anything in particular.

"What you were playing was good," he was told. 

"When?"

"Earlier tonight. The... slow one. I could hear it from Dutch's. It sounded nice."

Halted. Stilted. He watched Javier with the confidence of someone fully aware of their own skill and strength, and equally certain of their ability to come out on top in the case of a fight. Yet, there was a hesitance. 

It didn't take a genius in reading people to know why. Briefly, Javier wondered how many people the two spoke to, _really_ spoke to, on the full moons. When he'd first discovered their peculiar curse, he had wondered whether they were beasts turned man or man turned beast.

Facing them then, he didn't wonder any longer. He just played, as requested.

The music eased the unnamed tension from Arthur's shoulders and John's uneven temper. It soothed the whole situation. Javier hadn't even been aware of how much the atmosphere felt like a fresh wound agape, its blood flowing freely in the glances and mannerisms and Hosea's genuine joy in seeing the two stark under his practiced nonchalance.

"Anything you wanted to do this moon?" Hosea asked idly, after all four of them fell silent to enjoy the music.

Instantly, Arthur answered. "A ride. Might as well while the horses don't think I'm gonna eat 'em."

John scuffed his boot against the ground, again. He said, "Thought I'd head into town." 

He evaded Hosea's curious, almost sharp, look. "It's a ways. Saloon probably won't even be open."

"You're probably right."

Arthur said, "You'll need more clothes."

"Probably that, too."

Silence. 

Javier strummed his guitar and did his best to fill it with music, but he had to keep quiet lest he risk waking the others (assuming they weren't eavesdropping, which was likely). Even if he'd been able to play as loud as he pleased, he wouldn't have been able to chase off the subtle disappointment that crept into their group. Whose disappointment that was, he couldn't say. In the morning, looking back, maybe he could-- and maybe it'd be everyone's. His, for not asking as much as he wanted to; the others, for not spending their time how they wanted to, whether that time be the night or the month or their lives as they stood.

Hosea said, "You two best be headed out, then. Not much time left in the night," and the two nodded and stood, like puppets with their strings pulled, like the recommendation was a dismissal, like they rarely thought twice about following anything they were told. Like the beasts' simplicity were in their minds, even as they maintained a man's form.

As he watched them go, his song quieted further. When he'd first figured out the secret behind Dutch's beasts, he'd wondered what they had originated as: man or beast.

In the end, he supposed it mattered only to those who had known them _before._ And there had to be a before, with how Hosea looked after them, expression full of questions unasked. With how Dutch did, too, from where he smoked a cigar at his tent's edge, removed and watching with a dark, displeased look. Not at them _leaving_ , Javier thought, because it was undisputed that they'd return. Rather, at what they'd return _as._

Javier quit his playing as they quietly replaced halters with bridles for two horses (John did not fetch more clothing), and departed, without saddles or stirrups or other things that would take too much time. As Hosea sighed and, much too easily, declared, "And now you know our deepest mystery, Mr. Escuella. I'm sorry it's not as glamorous as the rumors make it out to be."

Javier wasn't sure he did know the mystery, but he suppose he understood enough.

"Sleep well," he bid Hosea when he rose to retire.

Hosea smiled, thin as memories long gone. "Thank you. But on these nights, I never do."

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/exkingly) / [tumblr](https://unkingly.tumblr.com). thank you for reading!


End file.
